A Venezuelan emergency room physician was detained by immigration officials at a Texas airport Saturday while attempting to join her husband for a long-awaited asylum interview, entering her sixth day in detention at the time the Associated Press reported the case. Dr. Rubeliz Bolivar, who held work authorization valid through 2030, was arrested at McAllen International Airport by Customs and Border Protection while traveling to Los Angeles where her husband, Milenko Faria, had scheduled an asylum interview Thursday after waiting more than a decade for the appointment.
The detention reflects President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration enforcement policies and illustrates what a South Texas immigration attorney describes as a pattern of arrests targeting individuals with pending applications before U.S. immigration authorities, raising questions about how the government is implementing asylum and immigration procedures.
The Detention
Dr. Rubeliz Bolivar showed her driver’s license and work authorization document to Customs and Border Protection officers at McAllen International Airport on Saturday morning. The Real ID-compliant license and work permit—valid until 2030—should have allowed her to board a domestic flight. Instead, she was detained.
The immigration officer demanded proof of legal permanent residency, Bolivar’s husband said in an interview with the Associated Press. She told them she was in the process of adjusting her immigration status to a green card and was traveling to California for an asylum interview. That was enough to trigger her arrest, before she could pass through Transportation Security Administration screening.
Her 5-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen, was arrested alongside her. The child was handed to her grandfather 19 hours later. Bolivar entered her sixth day in immigration detention at El Valle Detention Facility in Texas as of the article’s publication.
“She has asked several times why she was detained but has not received any response yet,” said Milenko Faria, her husband, in a telephone interview.
The Interview That Never Happened
The couple had been waiting more than a decade for an asylum interview. On Thursday—four days after Bolivar’s arrest—Faria attended that interview at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices near Los Angeles. He went alone.
Faria, 36, has worked as an information systems technician for a California company since 2019. Bolivar, 33, is a Venezuelan-trained physician who began working as an emergency room doctor in McAllen, a city of approximately 150,000 in the Rio Grande Valley near the Mexican border, in June 2025. She was accepted into a medical residency program in the area, which is federally designated as medically underserved.
“She was always focused on the community, and when she was accepted, it was an immense joy,” Faria said. “We have never done anything outside the law. We have done everything by following the steps in accordance with the law to obtain permanent residency.”
Bolivar arrived in the United States in 2016 with a tourist visa, Faria said. Before her authorized period of stay expired, she was included in the asylum application filed by her husband. The couple is also seeking a green card through a skilled-worker visa application processed by Faria’s employer.
The Government’s Position
The Department of Homeland Security justified the detention on grounds that Bolivar had overstayed her visa. “She has overstayed her visa since 2017, nearly a decade, and had no legal status,” said DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis.
The couple had been protected under Temporary Protected Status for Venezuela, which shielded more than 600,000 Venezuelans from deportation. President Donald Trump terminated that protection, along with TPS for Haiti, Syria, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and other countries. That decision has been challenged in federal court.
The Pattern
A Venezuelan colleague of Bolivar’s faced a similar fate. Dr. Ezequiel Veliz was detained by Border Patrol agents at a checkpoint in South Texas on April 6 after working as a doctor under Temporary Protected Status. His work authorization was suspended when the protection was terminated.
“He was one year and four months into that,” said Victor Badell, Veliz’s attorney. “He couldn’t continue working legally. He had to stop.”
Veliz was waiting for a visa requested by the hospital where he worked when he was detained while traveling to Houston with his husband. After spending about ten days in detention, Badell secured Veliz’s release by requesting a bond hearing. Veliz paid $8,000 to be released.
Jodi Goodwin, an immigration attorney in South Texas, observed a shift in policy around September or October 2025, particularly regarding travel by individuals with pending USCIS applications. “It just became a very apparent trend where anyone that had some kind of application pending with USCIS, whether it was an adjustment of status or asylum, anything like that, they were going to be arrested,” she said.
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